Make Me a City

by Jonathan Carr

  He was on all fours now, digging in with his feet even though they were so frozen he could not feel them. What really held him up was the stub of a branch to which he was clinging with his fingertips. He was trying, Lord knew he was trying. But he was only managing to keep his balance and stay afloat. He was going to die, and he couldn’t stop it, and that made him furious. He was too young to die. And for what? To make some businessmen in Chicago happy? Was that all his life was worth? It was only a few months since God took his father. And now you’re taking me too? What kind of cruel, heartless God are you? Rage renewed his strength. Don’t think, God, that I shall go quietly.

  He made a frantic last attempt to reach the bank. He even saw Paddy jumping up and down, waving, and that filled him with hope and he wanted to wave back but he could not because he was slipping and sliding in the rushing water. A wave hit him full in the face, hard as a plank. It knocked out his breath, and he tasted the metallic tang of blood. Change your mind, God, and surprise me. Give me a rock to mount, give me a branch to grab, strand me on a sandbank. Dear God, give me one of your miracles.

  Gus had no more thoughts, at least not in the ordinary sense. In the last few seconds, when he was neither fully alive nor fully dead, his mind was filled instead with pictures of his life. An ordinary mind would have tried to look at them one by one, and put them into sequence. But at the last moment, Gus’s mind changed into something else. It expanded and found remarkable, unimaginable new powers. That was why his life, at the moment of its imminent demise, turned into a magnificent stim of pictures.

  The Detroit Evening News

  March 29, 1856

  Swedish Immigrant Finds a Watery Grave at St. Clair Falls

  A sad accident which resulted in the going out of one life at St. Clair Falls Tuesday morning. A logging team led by Jack Stone, comprised of eighteen men, were engaged in a drive down the St. Clair from their camp four miles upriver. We understand that all was going well until a logjam built up a few hundred yards before the Falls. A 17-year-old Swedish immigrant named as Gus Swanson, working his first season with the team, volunteered to break the logjam. It seems that the young man, having achieved that aim, was swept off balance and carried toward the Falls. Mr. Stone reports that despite repeated attempts from the rest of the team to pull him to safety on the succor rope, their efforts were to no avail. Swanson was observed flying off the edge into the seething rapids, clad only in shirt, pants and caulk boots. In a poignant touch, we must add that according to fellow logger Paddy Mohan, who observed the fall, Gus Swanson had his eyes “tight shut” when he was driven over the edge to his doom. No body has yet been found, but pieces of his clothing have been discovered on the lumber. This is the first such accident to have occurred in St. Clair this spring, and it is indeed an unhappy beginning. Incidents like this occur with appalling regularity and yet any number of men are prepared to try their luck, even though the wages decrease with each passing year. One lumberman who has served three years in the army, as well as run these Falls in all stages of water, says he would rather take his chances in battle. There is particular urgency this spring to drive as many logs as possible into the boom due to unprecedented demand from businesses in Chicago whose customary supply lines for timber were disturbed by the early freeze on the Great Lakes. St. Clair logging companies hope to take advantage of this situation, not only to make up Chicago’s current shortfall but also in the expectation that this will lead to additional business in future years.

  1856

  PEOPLE FROM THE PAST

  JOHN IS PREOCCUPIED this morning, saying little to Augustine on the slow journey across town from their Wabash Avenue home to the factory on the north bank. It rained heavily overnight, the streets are still flooded and the traffic is heavy. He answers the boy’s questions about what this or that building is, or what it’s going to be, but not with his customary enthusiasm. He would have preferred not to have brought Augustine along today, but he has been promising for such a long time that, even after what happened, he decided he could not put it off.

  As they clatter across the Rush Street Bridge and onto the north shore, Augustine wants to know why the water is red and greasy. That is because there are stockyards, tanneries and distilleries upriver, he explains, and they have nowhere else to get rid of their waste. The boy thinks that is silly, to throw everything away into the river. And why does it smell so bad and what is this barge taking where, and where is that clipper coming from, and if two boats are heading straight into each other, how do they not crash?

  He tells Augustine that most of the boats are carrying grain, and will be coming from elevators at the railroad terminals. What are elevators and how many are there in Chicago and how big are they and how much grain do they hold all together? Normally, these kinds of questions would have delighted John, and he would have explained the purpose of the elevators in detail. Today, he merely answers the questions. There are a dozen elevators in Chicago. The biggest is the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad’s, which has ninety bins and holds up to seven hundred thousand bushels of grain. The city’s elevators can store over four million bushels at any one moment, which is more than St. Louis can ship in a whole year.

  “What is a bushel?”

  “A quantity of wheat that weighs sixty pounds.”

  “How much does a pound weigh?”

  John feels numbed by hurt. The only good thing to be said is that his mother did not live long enough to witness what happened earlier this morning. For her, it would have been the last straw. She was always telling him he should not stand for it, and that Kitty ought to show him more respect. In other words, that he needed to put her in her place. It is perhaps his greatest failing, he thinks, that he never has. And it’s too late now.

  Perhaps it was foolish to have confronted her in the way he did. She was bound to retaliate. On the other hand, does she not deserve it? John swallows. Yes, she deserves it. But even as he reassures himself, a little voice asks him what right he has, to cast the first stone? What about his own transgression? Yes, but she knows nothing about it, and it was only once, and it was a mistake.

  Kitty has never loved him. But can he say that he has ever loved her either, truly loved and worshipped her as he once, in his youth, loved and worshipped Miss Eliza Chappell? No, he was temporarily infatuated with Kitty. That was all.

  He cannot get it out of his mind, how she stood in front of the giant portrait of herself, hands on her hips, a lock of red hair shooting out of the bonnet at each ear, her narrow face pinched with fury. She acted as if he had betrayed her. He had been snooping on her, she said. He explained to her what must have happened. She had dropped the letter. One of her slaves had picked it up and assumed it belonged, not to her, but to him. It was therefore put on his desk. He could not be accused of snooping, could he, for reading a letter left on his own desk?

  But she was not interested in listening to reason, or to anything else he had to say. Did he not see how he had ruined her life? Was he not ashamed? Everyone knows he only married her for her money and her position in society. “If only you had joined the army, you wouldn’t have turned out the way you have.” She should never have agreed to marry a man beneath her station and condemn herself to a life in this “filthy backward city.”

  They are nearly there. As they turn onto his private road, and the driver hisses to the horses, pulling on the reins to slow them down on the curve, John leans forward and tells him to stop in front of the gate. The wrought-iron signage over the top marks the entrance to THE PRAIRIE FARMER WORKS. He shades his eyes to look up. It’s a cloudy day, but the sun is working its way through. The italic lettering style is excellent. He had insisted on it.

  “Look, Augustine. What does it say?”

  Augustine reads the words aloud and then asks why he is not calling the new factory after the Atkins Automaton, if that’s what he is making there.

  “A good question.” He pats him on the shoulder and gives him an affectionate squeeze.
He is proud of the boy. “If you want to be ahead of everyone else, Augustine,” he says, “you must look not only at what’s happening now. You must also prepare for the future.” When he still looks puzzled, John explains that the site is much bigger than they need to build the Automaton. “That’s why your father had to pay seventy-two thousand dollars for it.”

  “But why did you do that, if you don’t need it?”

  “What did I just say, Augustine? About the future? How often have I told you that Chicago is growing faster than any other city in America? Remember those old charts I showed you last week, the ones your father drew a long time ago, when the Indians were leaving? What did I tell you made this place special?”

  “The Romans would have liked it.”

  “Yes. And why would they have liked it?”

  “There are no mountains. And it’s flat.”

  “Exactly. There are no limits on how far and wide this city can go.” This time the boy seems satisfied. “And even if we do nothing with the extra land, in five years’ time it will be worth double what it is now.”

  Augustine makes another face and takes a five-cent coin from his pocket. “Does that mean this will be worth ten cents in five years’ time, if I don’t do anything with it?”

  John laughs and tells him to put it somewhere safe because if he loses it, it won’t be worth anything at all. “Location, availability and need, that’s what makes real estate different from the coin in your pocket.”

  He steps down from the brougham and swings the boy to the ground. For a moment, his private worries disappear as he enjoys Augustine’s astonishment at the size and scale of the factory. “Is it really all yours, Father?” John is proud of what he has built. How happy his mother would have been to see this. She always wanted him to have a safe, steady business. The solid brick frontage soars three stories high. Above, two chimneys are pumping out plumes of gray smoke. The double doors are open. From beyond comes the noise of manufacture, the grind and hammering of iron, the squeal of metal and the rasp of timber being sawn, sounds that from a distance fill John with another wave of pride. He has made all of this activity possible, activity that is changing the lives of farmers all over the country, because—four or five years ago—he dared to believe in the revolutionary ideas of a man who is a bedridden genius.

  He asks one of the foremen about the whereabouts of Mr. Jenkins, the factory manager, and is told that he’s most likely outside at the far end, where the new steam drying kilns have been installed. Taking the boy by the hand, John leads him inside. Within the building, the competing sounds of the foundry, the metalwork and the carpentry benches are magnified, echoing back and forth as though not a single sound can escape. The noise is deafening. The air is hot and reeks of iron and oil. John rarely feels self-conscious, but walking through his own factory always unsettles him. There are not many places where he has a sense of not belonging but, ironically, this is one of them.

  Perhaps he is feeling more vulnerable than usual because of what happened earlier. Normally, he can shrug off the sense of inadequacy he feels when he sees a laborer do something he could not do himself. Put one of these rough, uneducated men with their knotty muscles and callused hands on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe, and they would soon find a way to build a shelter and catch food and make fire. He, though, would be dead in no time. The thought recurs more often these days: What have I achieved to equal what a laborer in my own factory can produce with his bare hands? What have I achieved that compares with what Jearum Atkins, confined to his bed, has achieved? How would Miss Eliza Chappell have judged me?

  He tries to explain the manufacturing process to Augustine, who has gone silent since they came inside. The boy looks overawed. They start at the near end, where two finished Automatons are standing on blocks as wheels are being rolled into place. John walks around and stands in front of one, touching a rod here, a blade there, trying to make it look as though he knows what he is looking for. They proceed down the middle of the two lines of worktables that run half the length of the factory. He stops to chat with one or two workers, as he always does, but feels particularly conscious today of his silk top hat and boiled white shirt and soft, clean hands. He does not ask about what they’re doing, but where they’re from and how long they’ve been in Chicago and whether they have family. Mostly, the employees are Irish and German, with the odd Englishman and Swede.

  At one workbench they are sawing and planing lengths of timber that will be used to build the Automaton’s frame. But the workbenches nearby, he notes with alarm, are empty again. Dai Jenkins had better have a good explanation for that, a very good explanation indeed. Where is the man? He hurries on. Augustine, annoyingly, insists on watching the welders. Clad in apron and gloves, they push rods in and out of the furnaces. One glowing orange-yellow lump is being withdrawn. It is hammered into shape. Sparks fly.

  “Shade your eyes, Augustine.”

  The boy is full of questions again. “Do they have a rest?”

  “Of course.”

  “How often? It must get very hot. How much do they get paid?”

  “About a dollar a day.”

  “Can I be a welder when I grow up?”

  “That’s enough, Augustine. Come along now.”

  They find Dai Jenkins outside. He has worked as John’s manager since the doors first opened, six months ago. He is a young Welshman full of energy and good intentions, but he has never run a factory before. At first, John hoped it did not matter because he seemed to be a quick learner. But he is becoming more and more skeptical about Dai’s ability to meet production targets. John needs a minimum of three thousand Automatons this year, up from twelve hundred last year, but they have not yet made five hundred. At this rate, they risk missing the season altogether. New problems always seem to be cropping up. “Don’t worry, Mr. Wright,” he likes to say, “we’ll be back on schedule in no time.”

  Dai wipes his hand on his coat before bending down to shake Augustine’s hand. “Good morning, young sir,” he says.

  “The timber benches are idle,” says John. “Are the kilns still not working properly?”

  “The kilns are working, Mr. Wright, and I can promise you that very soon they’ll be working exactly the way we want them to. Just a few more tests to run to be sure. The thing is this. It’s no good taking only ninety percent of the moisture out. We need a full hundred percent.”

  “At ninety percent the timber will warp?”

  “Not necessarily. But I’m not prepared to take the risk. Every Automaton that leaves this factory must be perfect.”

  “Do you understand, Dai, what it means for this business if Automatons do not start rolling out of here at once?”

  “We’re nearly there, we’re very nearly there, sir.”

  It looks as though virtually all the lengths from the first two consignments of pine John has bought at great expense from mills in Michigan—after exerting enormous pressure that they be given priority—are still stacked up, the same as they were a week ago. Dai promised that the new kilns would be working last week, and that they would dry the wood in a matter of days.

  “Come along with me,” Dai says to Augustine. “Let me show you how a kiln works.”

  John hears Augustine say, unimpressed, that it looks like a big oven.

  “It is. But it’s a very special one.”

  “But if it’s an oven, doesn’t the wood just burn?”

  “No. We steam dry it instead.” Dai Jenkins explains that the oven creates heat that draws moisture out of wood that was still part of a tree somewhere in Michigan only a few weeks ago. “Isn’t that a wonderful thing? A tree one day, inside an Automaton the next.”

  “If only,” thinks John. He curses silently. Why this year, of all years, did the Great Lakes have to freeze early? If they hadn’t, there would have been no need to build these kilns and buy green wood because the seasoned pine he’d ordered months ago would have arrived. He has made big claims about those three t
housand Atkins Automatons being on the market this summer. If they can’t produce them, he will be a laughingstock and the financial consequences don’t bear thinking about. Mr. McCormick will sweep up his unfulfilled orders and claim that John S. Wright and his Automaton are nothing but hot air.

  * * *

  That evening, after saying good night to the children, he goes into his mother’s old room and closes the door behind him. Molly has informed him that Kitty is not feeling well and has retired to bed early. When his mother died, he ordered that her room be kept exactly as it was. Kitty objected, and on a number of occasions during the first few months, she insisted it be opened up, cleared out and used. The children could make it a playroom, or Molly could store the linen there and do her ironing and sewing. John snapped back that that was one thing Molly would never do there. In any case, argued Kitty, it was a waste of a perfectly good room. Strangely, even though he knows that for once she is right and that it is an odd battle to fight, he has refused to back down. The room has become his sanctuary. Kitty would never come in on principle, and the children know to leave him be.

  He stands for a moment by his mother’s ironing board, which is supported on two trestles and covered by the old blanket she always used as a base. On top is the flatiron itself and her sewing basket, with its little compartments for thread, scissors and pins. How she loved her sewing and ironing. It calms me down.

  At the bookcase, he runs his fingers along the spines. He feels exhausted. Will Dai Jenkins ever get those kilns working properly or not? If so, when? And there is everything else too. The sale of the old Searcy lot has fallen through, and that means he has no choice but to mortgage Kitty’s properties on Clark Street if he is to pay off the outstanding loans on the factory. The Prairie Farmer is owed over $10,000 as a result of subscriptions not being paid. Nobody seems to have any cash, and Eastern pens are beginning another spiteful campaign to denigrate the West. He loosens his collar and undoes the top two shirt buttons. The third button pops off and lands somewhere on the floor. “Sorry, Mater,” he says aloud.